Sizzling Sweet Summer Season Soon, See?

I don’t know what it is about the summer that brings out the alliterations in me. Sensational Sunshine? Horrible heat, high humidity?

Of course it is only February, but tomorrow here promises to be 10ºC. That reminds us that there will eventually be a summer again. Better still: tomorrow I can drive my Chevy Camaro ZL1, the White Angel, to my workshop in Kitchener.

“Kitchener”, incidentally, reminds me that the story of war is written by the winners. Lord Kitchener invented concentration camps in the boer war of the early 20th century. So you might expect him to be remembered as a war criminal. Instead, he has a city named after him, and Wikipedia describes him as “The Earl Kitchener KG KP GCB OM GCSI GCMG GCIE PC.” Yes, you heard that right: “KG KP GCB OM GCSI GCMG GCIE PC”. The more letters, the more respect. History is written by the winners.

It didn’t help him: he was killed, together with 600 others, when his ship hit a mine.

Back to today, a century later. Summer brings out the best in photography in me, too. Namely, light. In particular, flash mixed with ambient light. And that is what I am teaching tomorrow.

The last leaves I saw were these:

Now, I wait for them to re-appear. When that happens, and when the weather gets better, we once again engage in outdoors photography. Flash. We get enthused again, about photography and about life in general.

I encourage you to grab your camera, check out your lenses and flashes, then build some new skills to use this season.

Try something you have never done. Street photography, if you are a model shooter. Or models, if you are a food photographer. Do some crazy post work (see above, in Lightroom). Learn Lightroom! And so on. Learn flash. Learn good composition. There is so much to learn, there are so many types of photography: start with this blog, why don’t you. Read back, or read random posts. Use the SEARCH field above.

But above all, have fun. If photography isn’t fun, or isn’t fun anymore, you will not be your best. So tomorrow in Kitchener will be fun for the 20-25 students I will have in the class. I’ll think of ways!

And that is what I am going to do right now. Prepare to teach:

Flash technical basics

On-camera flash

Off-camera flash, and how to do it

Modifiers

Multiple flashes

Small flashes or studio flashes?

Lots to learn. Lots of fun. And learning new skills is fun. I will teach some mroe here soon, so stay tuned.